Monday, May 30, 2011

If any of you know me or have been following this blog for pretty much any amount of time, you would know that I am technologically inept. I don't know how to use most devices invented in my lifetime, or before it for that matter, and the one's I do know how to use I have a tendency to break. This facet of my life (the facet where I break things and don't know how to use the one's I don't break) recently came into a conflict with my dance life (the life where I dance for P.E. credits because running scares me). For our dance final, we were basically told to get into groups and choreograph a dance using one of the styles we had studied this year. My group is thankfully comprised entirely of people I'm friends with, and being the huge Disney nerds that we are we chose to do a jazz dance to a medley of songs from the movie Hercules.

However, being the huge Disney nerds we are does not mean any of us know how to cut music, and considering we wanted to squish the three most dance-able song from Hercules into approximately two minutes, music cutting was necessary. But being the person that I am, I stepped up and said that I would take it upon myself to cut the music.

This is the part where you should all be going *headdesk headdesk headdesk.* Why didn't my friends try to stop me? Well, voice inside my head, I don't know either. But my friends fell for me fake confidence and told me that cutting the music was a responsibility I was perfectly capable of taking on. Are you shaking your head in despair yet?

The music for the dance is due tomorrow, and this afternoon I sat down at my computer and decided I should probably make that happen. And by that I mean I sat down at my computer having absolutely no idea what to do. Please try not to laugh at me as I explain the various methods and attempts I used.

PLAN A

The first thought that came into my head was that I would video tape the YouTube videos of the songs I wanted, upload those videos to Windows Movie Maker, and smash them all together and make a video montage, except that the video part wouldn't be important. However, when you video tape a video, the sound quality gets really, really bad. Also, I couldn't figure out how to get all three files into one place, because I would upload one video to movie maker, and then when I uploaded the second video the first one would disappear. So that plan went out the window.

PLAN B

I miraculously found an option on Windows LIVE Movie Maker (keyword: live, previously I had been using plan old Movie Maker) to upload audio only. At this point, I decided to stop being cheap, get onto my desktop (where I have iTunes installed) and actually pay for the music I wanted. So, after going through all the annoying processes that iTunes makes you go through before you buy one simple .99 cent song, I was kind of stuck. I started by trying to upload the iTunes audio files to movie maker, which took way longer then it should have. Before I could even figure out how to cut the music, I was told that the music cannot be played until I have enough images to take up the time of the song. I went to Windows Help, because I had no idea what they meant, and there I found a sneaky way to get around this little rule, which is that you fix the image to stay on the screen the entire time the music played. I was excited at this prospect, but it didn't work. Don't ask me what went wrong, I have no freaking clue.

PLAN C

I was getting pretty desperate at this point. I tried calling a couple friends who I was aware were more technologically savvy then I am (i.e. everybody), and I was eventually able to reach Jack (a.k.a Shaq). Shaq and I were able to use our combined knowledge of iTunes to figure out how to cut the music to the desired length (while still retaining the original file and not loosing forever the parts of the song that are not in our dance) and make these songs into a seamless CD. And here's the kicker:

IT WORKED. Everything worked! I was able to cut the music, which took a while because I was being so OCD and anal retentive about the transitions, and download the whole thing on a CD, and then play the CD with no problems!

I have to say, my self-esteem went through the roof. For the first time in my life I have been able to do something mildly technologically advanced with a minimal amount of help and no face-to-face human interaction. Future possibilities are endless- who knows what weird tech savvy stuff I'll be doing next.

Now I'm debating whether or not I will tell the girls in my dance class about my minor fails. Do the ends justify the means? In this case, I definitely think so. Needless to say, I've been listening to me CD pretty much non-stop since I realized it worked perfectly. Hercules is going to be stuck in my head for the rest of my life.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Everything is back to normal. The universe has righted itself. My luck has not changed for good.

This morning I dropped my lunch box. I drop things all the time, but today happened to be the day when I dropped my lunch box while there was a glass bottle filled with coffee inside it. So, when I picked it up all I had was a lunch box filled with coffee and glass shards. I didn't eat lunch today.

Aside from that my day was just generally unlucky. I made mistakes in math and Hebrew (two classes where I usually don't make mistakes) and it was just.... Monday. In the words of my dad, it was a very Monday Monday.

On the bright side, thanks to the tumblah I have found myself a website where I can download a bunch of OBC recording absolutely free of charge. My life just got a whole lot better. On the down side, I have a ton of lines that should be memorized right now... and aren't. Well, there goes my night.

This post got boring way to quickly. You'd think listening to The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee and Avenue Q soundtracks would make me more witty. Oh, well.

Happy birthday to Drew Carey..... screw it I don't care about these people.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Usually I resort to blogging about my personal life when things aren't exactly going my way, which I have to admit is very often. I'm not the luckiest person in the world. Wait, let me rephrase that. I don't believe in luck. I believe in hard work and determination. However, even with the factors of hard work and determination, I have had the misfortune of wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time syndrome and people around me making stupid decisions that affect me adversely. But recently, some pretty good things have been happening to me. And it's kind of weird.

Just a week ago, if any of my friends could have attested to the fact that I wasn't in the greatest mood. Things, like usual, weren't really working out as I expected. School was getting extremely difficult and my social life was suffering (will, my social life is never not suffering), and I was generally not happy about certain aspects of my life. Then Thursday and Friday happened.

Thursday is drama club day, as any of my fellow thespians could tell you. But this Thursday wasn't just any drama club day, it was ELECTION DAY. I worked hard on my speech, (In case you were running, my entire speech rhymed. Thank goodness for rhymezone.com), dressed really nicely, and was just generally ready to go. However, I had promised my friend formerly known as Jack that I would impress him with my physical prowess by doing a cartwheel in my speech. Unfortunately, while I was practicing my speech at home I hit my foot on a chair and fell out of the cartwheel. Yeah, I know, I'm brilliant. So, last minute I needed to resort to the one other physically impressive thing I could do: the splits. Fortunately, my dash of flexibility mixed in with my incredible rhyme-filled story telling capability and persuasiveness, I secured Shaquille's (that would be the friend formerly known as Jack) vote, and apparently a lot of other people's too- I got elected to board! Not only did I get elected, but so did the other six people who comprised the "dream team" of students that my friends and I hoped would make the board. Yes, my sentence structure is in fact flawless.

The next good thing that happened to me occurred on Friday morning when I passed my permit test. Yay! However, this doesn't really mean anything yet since I can't legally get behind the wheel until after my first hour of instruction, and even then I can only drive in daylight hours with a licensed driver over the age of 25 in the vehicle. Additionally, my picture is disgusting. But I'm six months closer to freedom!

The third good thing that happened to me was that I got into link crew, but everyone who shows up to their interview gets in, so I don't really count that one.

Now for the fourth fortuitous event, which also proves itself to by the most surprising and confusing. On Wednesday I auditioned for mixed choir, which is the more advanced of the two choirs at my school. I practiced a lot, with the help of some of my more musically gifted friends, and I had an appropriate level of nervousness before the audition. It wasn't until I stood up there in front of the judges that it actually hit me. I was physically shaking, and I couldn't stop no matter how hard I tried. When I started singing the sound that came out of my mouth surprised me, my face most have looked ridiculous due to the shock I felt at how bad I sounded. In my mind it was one of my worst performances of that song I had done, and the pity hug I got from Elizabeth when I was done with the audition didn't help. The teacher told the group of auditioning girls that he was looking for 14 boys and 17 girls.

On Friday, some of the boys in band overheard the two music teacher discussing the mixed choir list, and they told a few of my friends that they had made it. At this point I wasn't too nervous, because there were still remaining spots for female singers, and it didn't seem like that many girls auditioned.

That afternoon in choir, the girls who got into mixed were congratulated by our teacher, myself included! I was so happy and proud of all my friends who had gotten in, and it really seemed like next year was going to be in our year. However, something was off- the grand total of singers amounted to 17 guys and 13 girls, a complete reverse of what was expected. With this announcement, a thought was planted in my mind, and as anyone who has seen Inception can tell you, once a thought enters your mind, it doesn't leave.

My thought stewed inside me but I didn't dare mention it in front of the other girls, because once it is spoken then it's real. But yesterday, one of my friends mentioned a rumor she had heard that basically confirmed my thought- not enough girls auditioned for mixed choir, so everyone who had auditioned got in.

Although I am glad I got in, I didn't want to get in this way. Now I am only going to doubt myself. Did I get in because I deserved it, or simply because they needed voices? I'd like to think our school's music department had enough integrity that they would reject musicians who can't pull their own weight, no matter what the need.

In summation, I basically don't know what to think right now. I don't know whether to be happy I got in, or upset because I didn't really deserve it. It also gives me just another reason to distrust my singing capabilities.

In the coming days I have two more auditions, one in two days and one in two weeks. Until then, I will try to be happy with the outcomes I already know about, even though I am not sure if I should be or not.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Last night I went to my school's fashion show, and fortunately the two lines I voted for (my friend Stephanie's Getty/Black Swan inspired line and Nicki's Lady Gaga line) took first and second place respectively. Yes, that would be me correctly predicting popular opinion! Anyway, I really enjoyed the fashion show, especially considering that after the less-than-great day I had yesterday, I really didn't want to go. But I put down my pride and decided it was necessary for me to be there to support my friends, sucked it up, and went to the fashion show.

Something that was really interesting about this... display was the wide variety of types of lines. Some of the girls, to put it simply, designed things with little to no originality that reminded me of things girls wore all the time and probably bought at Forever 21. Thankfully, these girls didn't win. Others designed more costume-y pieces, there was even on completely Halloween themed line. Stephanie and Nicki both designed very high fashion. Stephanie's line I could envision very clearly on celebrities walking the read carpet-all of her gowns were absolutely gorgeous. Not necessarily sensible for the mainstream audience, but gorgeous. Nicki's line was very clear an art display. It was Lady Gaga inspired, but it wasn't a direct imitation. I.E. she didn't make a dress out of meat... but one outfit did feature some candy. One of the things that made me so impressed with Nicki's line in particular was that I know Nicki, and as a person she is very conservative. She dresses nicely but modestly and is soft-spoken and polite. None of those adjectives could have described this line. Just so show you what I mean, when my friend Sophie came on the runway modeling a dress Nicki made that was completely hand painted and gorgeous and strange, I yelled, "OH MY GAWD!" causing Sophie to laugh and break her model-concentration-face. Yeah, my self-control is fabulous.

Anyway, so we had Stephanie and Nicki's awesome designer-status lines and then we had some pretty crappy and clearly not well made Forever 21 like lines, but there wasn't very much in between. The closest thing I saw to anything that was original but mainstream enough that I could see myself wearing it in public was my friend Jody's Peter Pan inspired line. She made really nice, quality clothing that I would definitely wear. And Jody, if you are reading this since I know you follow my blog, I am not saying this to make you happy. I'm saying this because it's true.

Well, this evening of fashion as represented by people at my school who are interested in fashion, brought me to think about the types of fashion that I am exposed to on a daily basis at my school. You see, my school has a reputation for being indie. So, we get our fair share of people who dress like this. Then, on the opposite extreme, my school has a reputation for being kind of slutty and low class. For that, we have the girls who dress like this. Then there are average girls and girls who find it socially acceptable to wear pajamas to school. Now, I like to think of myself as a girl who dresses... nicely? I've had people accuse me of being unbelievably indie, but my personal favorite is the word that Sydney invented specifically in order to describe my fashion sense: chosh. It's a combination of chic and posh. Essentially, I like to look presentable. An average outfit for me would be a floral dress with a cardigan and oxfords or (if I haven't shaved my legs) skinny jeans, a nice blouse, a statement belt, and TOMS or Converse. However, I generally prefer to wear dresses or skirts. Pants or for cold weather (otherwise known as no shave weather). So, I just like to be presentable. But then again, my outlook on clothes is entirely different than that on hair and makeup. In the morning, I take putting on clothes very seriously. However, I don't wear a drop of makeup and the most effort I'll put into my hair is a sloppy bun or a headband. I'm not too great with cosmetics.

So this brings me to my point. Why can't people just dress nicely? It really doesn't take that much effort to put on a pair of nice, dark wash jeans (I prefer dark wash to light wash), a simple, V-neck tee, shoes that aren't falling apart, and freshly brushed hair. A couple accessories and you're good to go. Something like this doesn't take any effort and all and looks casual, but clean and put together. Come on, people. Look nice.

Seriously, when I oversleep and don't look my best at school, I don't feel good. For me, clothes are all about self-confidence, and if you don't feel good in your clothes there's no point. Yet at the same time, there is a level of social acceptability that is necessary to maintain. Like with Jody's line, it has to be original yet slightly mainstream. It's a difficult balance, but I find by watching any given episode of What Not to Wear, Stacy and Clinton give enough useful advice to last a lifetime. I can't even hold a candle to their fashion knowledge.

Okay, the second rant will have to wait. Monster's Inc. is on, and I'm just not quite in the mood to write anymore.

Friday, May 13, 2011

As you hopefully discerned from the title, I planned on posting yesterday, but the evil menace that is the internet did not allow me to do so. This unfortunately means that three ideas for three separate blog entries that don't really mesh well together are all currently living together inside my brain and I don't know which one I feel like writing about. I have to discuss the Deep Thoughts Per Second Ratio Formula, My Evolution Through Shoes, and be teenage angsty. This can't all happen at once. What to do, what to do?

This blog is officially a fail. I guess this has turned into a teaser blog for the three posts I intend upon posting sometime in the near future. Ahhh so much writing! Well, a writer's gotta do what a writer's gotta do.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

I'm sorry I've been so inactive in my blogging. I know all ten (double digits!) of my beautiful followers have probably been wondering what has been going on that has kept me away. Well, in order to relieve you of your suspense... I had the AP Euro test on Friday. So, the time between April 30 (my last post) and May 6 (AP Euro exam) it is pretty likely that I was off in a corner studying the going-ons in Europe from the Renaissance to the Cold War, shirking my responsibilities in all other areas, and procrastinating on something in some way. Since May 6.... I don't know I've just been busy doing nothing interesting. But I'm back in the blogosphere and blogging is now happening. Yes.

Which brings me to the the next order of business, the explaining of why I probably won't be around much in the next couple weeks. It's audition season, which is practically worse then exam season. Here is a brief overview of my schedule just so you get the gist of what's going on in my life when I'm not blogging:

Audition season kicks of on May 17 with my audition for one of the advanced choirs at my school. There are two of them, my schedule only allows me enough time to do one, if I get into one and not the other I will do that one, if I get into both I will pick the one that is taught by the teacher I don't currently have for non-advanced choir in order to have a different experience. If I get into neither, which ideally won't happen, I am not going to take choir again because I am sick of Choir I and am going to take a film or creative writing class, depending on what fits into my crazy-packed schedule.

Sometime between May 17 and 19 I will be called in to interview for Link Crew, a program at my school for getting new freshman acclimated to high school life. If you've been reading this blog for a little while you would know that. They told me that the interview is super casual and takes literally about ten minutes, and there isn't really anything for me to prepare, so I'm not exactly worried about that. Plus, I think my application was definitely good.

On what was supposed to be May 26 but was pushed up to May 19 I am running for drama board! I haven't written my speech yet, but I know what to say and how I want to say it, so hopefully that won't be a big deal. Just so you know, it's going to be pretty freakin awesome. That is the only detail allowed for now.

May 24 is the day I have to audition for Theatre III (that would be the highest level available at my school) via a monologue of my choosing. Too bad I haven't chosen a monologue yet, nor do I really know what direction I want to go with that. Dramatic? Comedic? Controversial? Awesome? Aaaaaggggghhhhh I need to get a monologue AQAP (as quickly as possible).

And, finally, the last audition I have to face until next fall, I am auditioning for a show that I hope to be in this summer. This show is called Chicago, which obviously has a lot of female characters in it, so I have hope for getting into the ensemble. However, the production company is very elite and I was considering auditioning with another elite company (they are doing The Sound of Music, and I've always wanted to play one of the kids) for security, but those auditions kind of already happened. So, that leaves Chicago, which I would really like to be apart of, however... I'm really, really scared. I had a nightmare about it last night, that's how scared I am. I haven't officially signed up for the audition either. I just feel like I'm not even close to good enough for the company and I already embarrass myself on a regular basis, so adding one more audition-related embarrassments to the list (current total: 6) is not something I want to happen any time soon. AH I'm such a coward.

So, that's basically what's going on with me. I apologize for the horrible vocabulary in this entry, I don't know why it sucked so much.

Happy birthday to one of the most awesomely named people ever, Karl Friedrich Hieronymus Freiherr von Münchhausen, who on top of all that is classified as an adventurer. I don't know who you are, but you seem fabulous. More happy birthdays go to Irving Berlin, Martha Graham, Salvador Dali, Natasha Richardson, and Cory Monteith.

I'm so happy I have STAR testing tomorrow. State mandated testing is the best, it makes me feel so adequate.